EDITED ON 10-7-15.
Chapter Two
Progress or the Lack Thereof
Beta read by Cairistona
It had been nearly an orn since the inquiry with the judges. Progress had been slow, and Alchana was frustrated well beyond her limits. The other three scientists had quickly learned to be silent and continue their work without complaint for fear of her wrath. The truth was that they were just as frustrated as she was, but they could not voice their opinions without volunteering to be Alchana's verbal whipping post. Everyone was tense, and the laboratory seethed with a vicious silence.
Alchana had chosen to seclude herself for the most part into a far corner of the lab where she could study her reports and logs more privately. There were various schematics scattered around her console, and the view screen was littered with several dozen code bases open on the holo-interface.
'Nothing makes sense!' Alchana thought angrily, her temper barely kept in check. At this point in time, anyone who approached her would be subjected to a tirade of angry words expressing her stress.
The ores had yet to be delivered to her lab, and Alchana was entirely fed up with the entire process. Apparently, the ore was not able to be mined conventionally and needed to be contained and processed through a quarantine before being transported from the facilities on the planetoid. She had been fed vague excuses for the delays, anything from radiation damages to a dispute between the Overseers.
Nothing could ever be easy for her, something, something, always had to go wrong. She should have learned to expect that by now.
But she could always count on Tiron. He had worked quietly and efficiently by her side as always, never complaining about the lack of progress. He really was the only reliable quint she could count on to get a job done properly.
Tiron wasn't there at the moment, having gone to the mining overseer personally to find out what the problem was. Alchana wasn't particularly worried that she wasn't there. She trusted Tiron to get what they needed.
"They must do it to spite me." Alchana mumbled vaguely, referring to the Judges and the incompetent quints that were somehow unable to keep track of a single document of paperwork.
She turned around and glared at the two silvery figures of the rebuilt drones. They stared back at her coldly, lifelessly. She groaned and rubbed her eyes fiercely with her tentacles.
In the free time she had while waiting on the ore to be delivered, Alchana had personally gutted two disabled drones and rebuilt them piece by piece according to her exact specifications. Yet another thing to frustrate her, as the judges only saw fit to allow her access to secondhand drone models. Supposedly, this was because 'production costs only allowed for a set amount of materials in prototype development' and apparently requesting priority for the ore had used up most all of her given allotment.
Set amounts her thrusters. Prototype development didn't have set amounts! You just kept trying things until something worked and if it didn't you tried something different.
Alchana groaned listlessly into her desk, having momentarily rested her head on the surface. She had not left the lab for more than a breem at a time in the last seven rotations. It hadn't been necessary in her eyes; nutrients were supplied in the lab, not that she ever bothered to consume them; as a scientist, she was accustomed to long orns without rest. Still, she was a ranking professor and could exit the lab as she pleased.
She glared carefully at the lesser scientists as she left the lab, a silent warning that they were not to stop working in her absence. She frowned deeply, for there wasn't much for them to do really; they had all hit rock bottom progress-wise. Many of the lesser scientists withered under her gaze, and the older ones simply continued what little they were working on as she passed.
Alchana punched a button on the lift and absent-mindedly waited for it to stop; she had decided to go to the courtyard stationed at the top of the science building. Although she would never admit it, she had always found the view from up there to be exhilarating.
The way the large binary Quintessan suns flared brightly over the peaks of the province's tallest towers, casting elongated purple shadows as the rotation was ending, while the city beyond began to light up in preparation for the night cycles. The sparse atmosphere allowed the stars to shine softly in contrast to the blazing scarlet suns even in broad light. Together it created an awe-inspiring beauty that even she was susceptible to.
Alchana almost allowed herself a small smile and released a tense breath of air as she slowly relaxed her shoulders for the first time in many a joor.
At the sudden sound of the lift returning Alchana whipped her head around and glared at Tiron as he levitated himself forward.
"Relax, Alchana," Tiron took the risk of sounding smug at her surprise.
"What do you want?" She hissed.
"What makes you think I want anything?" he asked amiably with a light smirk on his face. "Did you consider that perhaps I am here for presumably the same reason you are?" He gestured vaguely at the view behind her. The reddish tinge of the sky was fading quickly and soon the darkened purple hues enveloped the citadel.
Alchana snorted, "In case you hadn't noticed, you're a few clicks too late. The display is already finished."
Tiron chuckled and shrugged his shoulders, "Ah, you have me at that." He wouldn't try to argue with her. All he really wanted was to relax a bit in the evening air, the same thing she had obviously come up for.
"I'm not in the mood for your nonsense, Tiron." Alchana's voice hadn't lost its edge, but she knew she sounded tired, and she hated herself for the display of weakness. "So I ask again, what do you want?"
"Really, Alchana, be reasonable..." he continued his attempts of being at ease without much success.
"No matter what I do, I cannot succeed!" She began to pace on the rooftop, her levitation boosters flaring angrily. "I am surrounded by incompetent idiots who can't tell the difference between slag and coolant! Not to mention that all my plans are for nothing since we can't even get the ore delivered to the lab!" Her face changed she yelled at him, all her pent-up frustration pouring out towards the only quint she allowed herself that freedom with.
She was distraught with emotion from the lack of sleep and progress.
Tiron winced visibly at the insult but remained silent; he hoped she would be able to release her frustration, and then perhaps she would feel less inclined to terrify the scientists at her disposal. He hoped. Alchana was a hard femme to predict at the best of times, and he'd been around her far longer than any other quint he'd met, scientist or otherwise. While he wouldn't classify himself as her friend, he was the closest thing she had for companionship.
"…re useless. Are you even paying attention to me!?" Alchana paused in her ranting and huffed deeply, waiting for him to answer.
"Have you finished yet?" Tiron asked after mentally noting that her scarlet hued face remained in dominance.
Alchana sputtered slightly, "W-what!?" That clearly was not the response she had expected.
Tiron sighed, "Are you capable of carrying on a conversation like the respectable quintesson scientist that you are and I know you to be?"
She remained silent, and Tiron waited with bated breath. Tiron knew he was pushing her, and he would most likely regret it, but she needed someone to give her a push. Unfortunately, that task ultimately fell to him.
For a moment Alchana looked ready to slap him right on the spot, and she very nearly gave in to the temptation. Yet she remained unmoving, her motives conflicting as she glowered in his direction.
Anger was flooding her thoughts and she found it hard to think clearly, but somewhere, she knew she needed this. But for the most part, all she felt was her rage and frustration knotting her tentacles. It took a great deal of conscious effort to default back to her logical persona, and Alchana knew then just how exhausted she really was.
She looked up and found Tiron still looking toward her; his face showed that he was slightly wary of her, and she felt a strange feeling in her gut, but his expression also held something she couldn't label. He was pensive, almost anxious looking.
Alchana brushed the thought aside and pulled herself together. Tiron had a habit of making her feel and think many things that she would prefer not to feel, and he had developed an uncanny ability to read through her anger over the many vorns they had worked together. But for now she needed to get away, to find a quiet to process her own thoughts in. Then, and only then, would she be ready to work again.
"I believe I am going to go to my quarters." She stated simply and levitated to the lift, "Send me all the updates on the delivery process to my personal console." And then she was gone.
Tiron spent another few breems staring out over the balcony before also entering the lift and returning to the lab. He also had much to do.
Immediately upon entering her quarters Alchana felt more relaxed than she had in last two rotations. By no means was she at ease, though, despite her surroundings. At times she felt like the lab, as dreary as it was, was by far more familiar than her own quarters. She looked around briefly and swiped her tentacles across an empty counter and scowled disgustedly at the dust that gathered at the tips. Her quarters were rather sparsely decorated, a counter in one corner, her personal console in another, and a nutrient dispenser. A small room was partitioned off for a more private area where she could sleep. In her opinion, the necessities were all she needed.
"I spend far too much time in that scrap heap of a lab." She grumbled jadedly before sitting down at her desk and bringing up the user interface. One of the advantages of being head scientist was that one always got the best technology seeing as more often than not you played a part in its design.
Alchana smiled as the screen beeped quietly, alerting her that Tiron had already sent the files to her console. Her expression clouded slightly when she thought of her colleague, but she brushed the feeling off quickly.
The next few joors were fairly uneventful, almost to the point of boredom. Alchana had to admit, though, working in her quarters was a lot more productive since she didn't have to deal with all the malfunctions who called themselves scientists. Alchana's mood remained somewhat pessimistic, however, as she went through multiple transfer logs and various reports on the mining processes on the planetoid.
Here and there, Alchana would rewrite a faulty line of code from the base drone programming in preparation for activation, but she could find nothing seriously out-of-place that would hinder progress once an energy stabilizer was in place. The programming could not be faulted if something went wrong; it was by far the most immaculate arrangement of code she could hope for at this stage of the game.
But the lack of progress, the sitting and waiting, was exceedingly frustrating and soon Alchana was worse off than she had been in the lab.
Alchana got up and began randomly roaming through her quarters, internally fuming at the seemingly constant failures of her higher ups.
Another short bleep sounded from her console and Alchana scowled in annoyance at being disturbed. "What is it now?" She grumbled sourly before maneuvering back to her desk and activating the view screen. There was a small note from a private domain; this didn't bother Alchana in the slightest as she could hack the system within a few clicks if she had a mind to discover who the user was.
The note simply stated, "Patience brings all things."
Alchana growled softly; the audacity of some squids never ceased to amaze her.
Patience indeed.
This was more than likely Tiron's slag-headed way of telling her that he had accomplished the task given him.
The three-faced scientist sighed shortly, mostly in resignation towards her colleagues many quirks and perhaps just a miniscule amount of amusement. Even quints that knew her for a third as long as Tiron had, and not nearly as closely, knew that she was not a patient quint.
Hence the reason Alchana off lined her terminal and quickly exited her quarters. It was nearing the end of the rotation, so she knew that the lab would most likely be empty, allowing her room to work at her own pace. It was likely, even if Tiron had gotten the ore transfer to go through, that the actual delivery would not arrive until the new cycle.
Nonetheless, Alchana was eager to make sure all that needed to be done was place the stabilizing material in the drone once it arrived.
When she got there, she found the lab devoid of life –exactly as she expected. A lone panel flickered dimly where it had been left on. Alchana quickly brightened her work station and picked up several tools from underneath a stack of schematics, then allowed herself a small smirk as she began to dismantle the drone nearest to her.
While she was the head of the AI department, it was by no means her only skill; she could easily disassemble a drone and put it back together in a breem with her eyes closed. She would have expected nothing less from herself, having a certain pride in partly designing the original drones herself.
With what could only be described as juvenile glee, Alchana began digging into the internal wiring, her pale yellow face alight as she worked. It would probably take the full length of both night cycles to finish what she was starting, but when she was done... Everything would start coming together.
When Tiron entered the lab and found the door unlocked and the terminals active early in the next rotation, he instantly resolved to give his brother Bithon another lesson on how to properly lock up the lab when he left for the night. Sometimes his brother seemed to be nothing more than a drone himself, despite the fact Tiron knew him to be a capable, if not an arrogant, scientist.
More often than not, it felt as if he was the older pod mate.
His surprise at finding a dozing Alchana-Duani, however, was to be expected, when he saw her slumped against a counter, levitation device still active and flickering weakly. Although in retrospect, he thought, it wasn't entirely unsuspected. He had sent her that little snippet last rotation, after all; it wasn't entirely impossible that he had somehow triggered an epiphany.
Not that he could afford to take any credit, for it would have been entirely the result of his esteemed colleague's genius, he thought briefly if not just a little bitterly. It was not the first time he had nudged her into the right direction, but he respected her greatly and there was no reason for her to know. Besides, if she had wanted to, she would have already found him out quartex ago.
Tiron cautiously maneuvered his thrusters around her form to better see what she had been worked on. His gaze landed on the large form of a third drone. Alchana must not have seen fit to continue working on the other two previously rebuilt drones, he realized.
It was logical, he supposed, in her mind at least. She never could tolerate letting others do any significant amount of work –especially when it came to what she considered a personal project.
This new drone's visage structure was vastly different from what he and Bithon had designed, and it made the drone seem more… personified. At the moment, the drone was stripped of its heavier outer amour which limited what he could see of its aesthetic nature aside from the basic frame structure. However, he suspected that similar redesigns would be most likely.
From what he could tell, she had completely redesigned the unit's internal structure. Now, instead of following a standard grid-line arrangement, the internal coolant lines and energy dispersal followed a strange neural pattern. In the center of the prototypes chassis was a small box like container that he could only assume would house the stabilizing ore. Looking closer, Tiron grudgingly admitted its surprisingly efficient design despite the strange appearance.
It really was all he could do as an engineer not to poke around and explore the nooks and crannies of this alien design that Alchana had created.
Alchana's form suddenly shifted slightly and he swiftly retreated to the lab's entryway where he could easily re-enter the laboratory when she was fully awake. It was best for him to be out of her way when she woke up. He knew from previous experiences similar to this that she was not a pleasant riser, especially when having fallen asleep while working. The last thing he wanted was to be on the receiving end of that unpleasantness.
I hope you all are enjoying the story so far! Unfortunately we won't be seeing A3 for a while yet, but I am slowly setting the stage for his arrival.
I should be able to update semi-frequently since the first dozen chapters or so are already edited or in the process of being edited. Please review; it really encourages me to post more often!